<?php
/**
 * <https://y.st./>
 * Copyright © 2017 Alex Yst <mailto:copyright@y.st>
 * 
 * This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
 * it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
 * the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
 * (at your option) any later version.
 * 
 * This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
 * but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
 * MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
 * GNU General Public License for more details.
 * 
 * You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
 * along with this program. If not, see <https://www.gnu.org./licenses/>.
**/

$xhtml = array(
	'<{title}>' => 'IST your chair',
	'<{body}>' => <<<END
<img src="/img/CC_BY-SA_4.0/y.st./weblog/2017/05/30.jpg" alt="#13 CHAIR foR ISt. #13" class="framed-centred-image" width="800" height="480"/>
<section id="general">
	<h2>General news</h2>
	<p>
		Yesterday, a five-dollar bill was found crumpled on the floor.
		My coworkers were trying to figure out who it belonged to.
		I&apos;d returned bottles for deposit that day, so I&apos;d just acquired a five-dollar bill, which I promptly shoved in my pocket, crumpling it.
		I&apos;d forgotten to put the bill in my wallet once I got home.
		I&apos;d been wearing shorts when that happened though, and changed into pants for work.
		I couldn&apos;t&apos;ve possibly brought my five-dollar bill to work and dropped it, could I?
		I forgot to check when I got home, but this morning, I did.
		My bill was still in my pocket.
		It was illogical to think the bill might be mine, so I said it wasn&apos;t, but I couldn&apos;t help but wonder.
	</p>
	<p>
		I couldn&apos;t make this work any more without a desk.
		I mean, I could, but it&apos;s gotten to be a major pain.
		I decided to head to my mother&apos;s place to take the desk they offered me, using my bike to transport it instead of a dolly, as I still can&apos;t find a dolly.
		While I was in the area though, I decided to run a few errands.
	</p>
	<p>
		My first stop was Oregon Community Credit Union.
		There, I was going to get them to update the name on my account and pick up a cashier&apos;s cheque to pay my rent.
		The credit union representative I dealt with bent the certified copy of my court order, which I found to be very rude.
		At least my name&apos;s been updated in the system though.
		Between the shock that they bent up my official paperwork that I&apos;ll likely need to keep forever and the fact that I wanted to make sure my old middle name was cleared from the account (the representative was on top of it and had removed it before I even asked them to), I totally forgot to pick up the rent cheque.
		Oh well, I&apos;ll do it later.
		I still have some time.
	</p>
	<p>
		Next, I headed to Chase Bank.
		I feared I&apos;d end up working on my account with the banker that helped me set up the account, but I hoped that wouldn&apos;t come to pass.
		Sure enough, it did.
		They remembered me, and they remembered my account.
		I had to explain that Alex Yst was me all along; I&apos;d previously claimed to be my own roommate, so I could add my preferred name to the account and get the appropriate credit card.
		They remembered how to pronounce my name though, which was cool.
		Either that, or they can actually read, unlike most people, which would be even cooler.
		However, they weren&apos;t able to update my account.
		In order to update the account, I had to speak to someone over the telephone, on a line provided by the bank.
		They then sent me a form via post.
		It won&apos;t arrive for a while.
		I can either mail that form back to them, filled out and with my court order alongside it, or I can take the filled form and court order back to the bank and have them fax the documents over.
		The obvious choice is to go back to the bank.
		That way, I don&apos;t have to give up my court order and buy another copy from the Lane County Courthou&apos;.
	</p>
	<p>
		I stopped at a yard sale on the way to my mother&apos;s place.
		They were closing down and giving away everything.
		I&apos;d love to have picked up a couple chairs, but the desk had to take priority.
		I couldn&apos;t transport it all at once.
		I could&apos;ve gone back for them, but there was no time.
	</p>
	<p>
		As I said before, I planned to use my bike to transport the desk.
		It&apos;d be awkward and cumbersome, but at least it wouldn&apos;t kill my back.
		As it turns out though, the desk was much smaller than I thought it was.
		Carrying it on foot would&apos;ve been easy, but now I had my bike on me to deal with as well.
		I had to stick to the initial plan of resting the desk on the bike and walking the bike, which made the trip just a awkward as it&apos;d&apos;ve been with a larger desk.
		As I walked home, I thought about getting my server set up as a desktop computer.
		All I needed to do was figure out how to get it to connect to the Wi-Fi using the command line interface, then use <a href="apt:aptitude">Aptitude</a> to install a desktop.
		But then it hit me.
		I accidentally gave away my Wi-Fi card a while back!
		Without something to hard-wire this machine to, it&apos;s useless.
		I&apos;ll need to figure out how to get a working Wi-Fi card when time allows.
	</p>
	<p>
		My Social Security card arrived in the mail by the time I returned home.
		I thought about getting it and my $a[DMV] $a[ID] copied before heading to work, but there wasn&apos;t time if I wanted to shower and eat before work.
		I was able to take my documents next door on my first break to have them copied though.
		The head manager wasn&apos;t in, so I wasn&apos;t able to get everything to them, but one of the shift leaders took my stuff and said they&apos;d give it to the head manager tomorrow.
		If they remember to do that, it&apos;ll likely mean my next pay cheque will be issued to my name.
		If they forget, it&apos;ll be too late by the next time I have a shift.
		It&apos;s for this reason that I&apos;ve strategically left First Tech Federal Credit Union out of the loop on my name change for now.
		I&apos;ll be able to deposit the pay cheque, then once my name&apos;s updated in the system at my workplace, I can bring First Tech up to speed.
	</p>
	<p>
		One of the shift leaders asked a coworker &quot;Will you cover <span class="redacted">[REDACTED]</span>&apos;s break?&quot;, accidentally calling me by my birth name.
		They hilariously replied &quot;You mean Alex? I don&apos;t know any <span class="redacted">[REDACTED]</span>.&quot;.
		I honestly never expected my coworkers to switch names for me.
		I figured I&apos;d just last it out until I got a new job, then make the leap to my real name, without my coworkers needing to waste any effort.
		It means a lot to me that they&apos;re trying though.
		So far, not a single one of my coworkers that I deal with on a regular basis has intentionally called my by my birth name, save for one person that thinks they&apos;re funny waiting until the court says the change has been finalised.
		Still, they plan to make the switch, and I&apos;m thankful for that.
	</p>
	<p>
		A customer came through drive-through warning me never to go to prison.
		They said that not only do you pay for it while you&apos;re there, you pay for it when you get out.
		Forever.
		That&apos;s a scary thought, but I think I know what they&apos;re talking about to an extent.
		Part of it&apos;s probably the difficulty in getting a job when you&apos;ve got a criminal record.
		I don&apos;t plan to commit any major crimes though.
		I mean, I jaywalk, but that&apos;s about it.
	</p>
	<p>
		Remember my commitment to stop buying junk food and sweets?
		Well, I kept finding myself trying to justify pie as a fruit, not a sweet, so I could buy another one.
		It&apos;s full of apples, right!?
		Obviously that&apos;s just rationalisation though, and I won&apos;t be buying pies until I can quit being so fat.
		Maybe then, an occasional pie will be fine.
	</p>
	<p>
		As I arrived home from work, noticed a chair I didn&apos;t recognise along the wall of my neighbour&apos;s place.
		It was an upholstered chair with cushions, something you wouldn&apos;t want to keep outside.
		I found a note on the stair leading to my apartment though, reading &quot;IST your chair&quot;.
		Had ... someone promised me a chair and I&apos;d forgotten?
		Taking a closer look, I saw a note on it reading &quot;#13 CHAIR foR ISt. #13&quot;.
		Hmm.
		I figured I&apos;d take my bike up to my place, come back for the chair, then try to remember who&apos;d promised me a chair.
		I knew who offered me a vacuum cleaner if it works and an end table that they planed to donate, but I didn&apos;t recall a chair.
		On my way up with the bike though, my neighbour came out to make sure I saw the chair.
		It turns out they found someone moving in with their partner and giving away much of their furniture.
		Since they were already there, they picked up the chair for me.
		Nice!
	</p>
	<p>
		After getting everything into my apartment, I decided to head back to see if the chairs were still available at that yard sale.
		It was late, but they might still have their stuff out in the driveway with the sign saying to take it.
		The sign was gone though.
		I didn&apos;t feel right taking it without the sign, it seemed like theft.
		It&apos;s possible they changed their mind.
		One chair did remain though.
	</p>
	<p>
		I decided to take a trip to Y Street to see if it exists.
		If it did, I&apos;d snap a photograph of the street sign tomorrow by daylight to use on one of the pages of this site.
		Unfortunately, the lettered streets in this town end at V Street.
		Everything beyond V Street has an actual name.
		That means we have two A Streets in this town (one is South A Street, two streets over from regular A Street), but no W, X, Y, or Z Street.
		Lame.
	</p>
	<p>
		My <a href="/a/canary.txt">canary</a> still sings the tune of freedom and transparency.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="dreams">
	<h2>Dream journal</h2>
	<p>
		I dreamed I shared an apartment with Cyrus.
		We had a very tall residence, and we built up shelves to store stuff.
		Cyrus&apos; put their bet up at the top, touching the ceiling, but wasn&apos;t using our shelf pieces very efficiently.
		I was less than impressed when I saw the very-poorly designed latter they&apos;d built out of some of the shelf pieces, pieces we could&apos;ve used to set up more actual shelves.
	</p>
	<p>
		Later, the dream went bad.
		Doors seemed to have no meaning, and anyone could just enter and leave a space whenever they felt like.
		My father found their way into our apartment.
		That was okay, I guess, but then my mother showed up and assumed I&apos;d let my father in.
		My mother took this to be a betrayal, as my mother doesn&apos;t understand (in the dream or in the real world) that their children aren&apos;t required to take sides and choose a single parent.
		However, my mother wouldn&apos;t listen to my explanations that I hadn&apos;t even let them in and I wasn&apos;t sure how my cfather had gotten into the apartment.
		My mother really should&apos;ve understood though, as my mother had also gotten in and hadn&apos;t been let in.
		My mother instead decided to freak out.
		At some point, my mother decided on a system to figure out when to trust me and not.
		They dropped a name I recognised in the dream, though don&apos;t recall now, and tried to get me to guess what they were getting at.
		It took me several moments, as I couldn&apos;t place the name.
		After a bit, I realised it was the inventor of Bayes&apos; law.
		It&apos;s worth noting though that whatever name was dropped, it wasn&apos;t actually the name of the inventor of Bayes&apos; law in the real world.
		Also, the concept represented in the dream by the name &quot;Bayes&apos; law&quot; wasn&apos;t actually <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org./wiki/Bayes&apos;_theorem">Bayes&apos; law</a>; I&apos;m fairly certain it was actually <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org./wiki/Additive_smoothing">additive smoothing</a>.
		In any case, my mother was going to use their own false interpretations of situations combined with statistics to determine whether or not they&apos;d trust me in future situations.
		Feeling this was unfair, as my mother&apos;s false interpretations of situations would play a major role in this seemingly-practical way of determining trust level, and my mother <strong>*frequently*</strong> misinterprets situations, I refused to allow this.
		I told my mother that if they were going to do that, they could get out of my life.
		They chose not to drop the statistics and instead be done with me.
	</p>
	<p>
		At some point during this dream, I started trying to take mental notes for what to write about the dream once I woke up.
		This means some part of me knew I was dreaming.
		However, I also played along with the situation portrayed by the dream.
		I think on another level, I had no idea it was a dream.
		I&apos;ve had dreams in the past in which I try to take notes on the dreamscape.
		Usually though, I make the mistake of trying to take the notes on paper or something.
		Sure, paper is more reliable than my memory, but only when that paper actually exists outside the dreamscape.
	</p>
	<p>
		I later found my mother in my apartment again, so I chased them out.
		I grabbed what I think I remember was a pizza docker and ran at them.
		Once at the door of the apartment, they just sort of disappeared.
		This is how people were getting in and out despite my locked door.
		I left the apartment and continued chasing.
		It seemed I lived in the type of complex in which the apartments are joined by an inner hall and stairs area.
		I chased my mother a couple floors down, then stopped.
		I figured my mother would&apos;ve gotten the point by then, and that&apos;s all I needed.
		They stopped too though, and let me know the only reason they&apos;d stopped by my apartment was to let me know they&apos;d taken my trashcan to the curb for the garbage collector to empty.
		They had no business doing that though.
		I&apos;d do it myself later.
		More importantly though, they didn&apos;t need to invade my home to let me know about it.
	</p>
	<p>
		After having chased my mother away, there wasn&apos;t anything else happening.
		It was almost like the world had become an emptiness, a void.
		I had enough lucidity to wake myself from the dream.
		In truth, I did it because I thought the nothingness would be boring.
		If the dream&apos;s events had ended, why shouldn&apos;t the dream?
		Now that I&apos;m awake though, I realise there&apos;s a more important reason to cut the dream short.
		If you don&apos;t wake during a dream, you don&apos;t remember it.
		Had I chosen to remain in the empty dream world, I would never have know the dream had happened.
	</p>
	<p>
		So much for not having nightmares about my mother any more.
	</p>
</section>
END
);
